Conscientious Objection to Military Service and Laborde’s Exemption Test

Abstract

This paper applies Laborde’s theory of the justice of exemptions to what has become a relatively uncontroversial case, the exemption to military service. It assesses how the exemption test designed by Laborde can guide decision-making relative to a specific historical case, focusing on the French example. The exercise sheds light on how contextual considerations—the legal status quo, the geopolitical context, the number of objectors—decisively influence our normative reasoning about the justifiability of exemptions.